Victoria man sentenced to federal prison for distributing child porn

By FROM NEWS RELEASE
March 8, 2011 at 10:03 p.m.Updated March 7, 2011 at 9:08 p.m.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

A Victoria man has been sentenced to 10 years and a month in federal prison for receiving and distributing child pornography.

Jerry Wayne Mooney Jr., 41, was sentenced at a Monday hearing in Corpus Christi by Senior U.S. District Court Judge John D. Rainey.

In addition to the 10-year sentence, Mooney was ordered to register as a sex offender and serve a 10-year-term of supervised release.

Mooney pleaded guilty to both federal felony offenses in December.

At the time of his guilty plea, Mooney admitted he had used an online file sharing program to search for and acquire child pornography consisting of images and videos of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in May, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release.

His conduct was discovered by an undercover Corpus Christi Police Department officer, who used the same file sharing program to identify and download images of child pornography directly from Mooney.

A federal search warrant executed by FBI agents at Mooney's home in June resulted in the discovery and seizure of a hard drive containing hundreds of images and videos of child pornography, dozens of which had been previously identified as real victims by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to the news release.

The case, which was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lance Duke, was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.